Akedath Yitzchak and Avraham’s mistaken presumption

The most tragic figure in the Bible is God, said the famous Talmudic scholar Saul Lieberman. Indeed. No one has been more misunderstood than God. But let’s be honest; it’s His own fault. After all, one day He appears in the Torah as the Creator of the universe, full of mercy and love, while the next moment He’s utterly annoyed when He doesn’t get His way—especially when His creations do not listen to His commands. He splits the Red Sea for the Jews, saving them from their arch enemies, the Egyptians, and then leaves them without food and drink in the desert until they rebel and ask whether He really exists. The paradoxes abound. In several instances He rescues His people who are in Exile, while at other times He does not stretch out His hand when the Jews suffer one pogrom after another. He first carries them on His wings in Spain, but then makes them undergo the cruel Inquisition. He helps them find a safe haven in some northern European countries, but subsequently allows a Holocaust of such brutality that one is nearly forced to conclude that He no longer cares and has simply left. To further confuse His people, He performs miracles during the establishment of the State of Israel, later followed by the astounding victory of the Six-Day War, only to make a sudden about-face and throw Israel’s citizens into the disastrous Yom Kippur War, which claims the lives of many Israeli soldiers and traumatizes the entire nation. God seems to yo-yo through history, alternating between fits of anger and offers of mercy. By displaying these many inconsistencies He becomes downright impossible to handle.

Who else ever had such a track-record of the most radical paradoxes? And this is not all. Things get worse. This God requires unconditional submission to His demands and threatens to wipe out His people if they do not listen to Him. To add to the confusion, He seems completely surprised when many of His creations start sincerely wondering why they should follow Him. It is especially the Jewish people, the “apple of His eye,” who constantly experience these devastatingly unsettling paradoxes. They pay the highest price, and the consequences are too overwhelming to deny: The Jews start asking themselves what they should do with this God. Many feel no longer obligated to observe His commandments. Some deny His existence, but most see this denial as a copout and conclude that He is indeed the most tragic figure in history, and one needs to show Him mercy and be somewhat obedient.

Such is also the history of the first Jew. Avraham is promised by God that he will give birth to a child who will father a special nation that will promote this God and His ethical demands. From the beginning it is clear that God is more in need of this nation than Avraham is. After all, His prestige depends on it. Through this nation, He and His purpose for the world will be known. Avraham can’t wait to start his great mission, and once he has a son he will do anything to build up this unique nation for the sake of this God. Who would not want to serve such a God and take on this great assignment? Finally, Avraham gets his son, but the blow is not too far off. Not only is it disastrous, but it seems set up to destroy any possible belief that this is a merciful and wonderful God. To his utter shock, Avraham is asked to sacrifice his son as a token of his complete commitment to this very God! The God, who is in dire need of this nation, and therefore of Avraham’s son, ruins His prestige and undoes his goals in one stroke—no son and no nation! And it is God who undermines Himself by doing so. He appears to be committing spiritual suicide. After all, what will become of Him without this nation?

What is Avraham to do now? Should he rescue God from Himself and refuse to give a hand to this suicide attempt? Or should he perhaps become an atheist? After all, such a God cannot exist! But Avraham goes for neither of these options. His total commitment to this God prompts him to make the greatest mistake of his life. He listens and is prepared to give up his son without even a fight, thinking that this is what it means to be really religious—even if it undermines God’s prestige and brings an end to His goals.

Avraham still lives in the world where man submits unconditionally to any god, whatever its demands. He is still a child of his times; subordination is seen as the pinnacle of religious devotion. Only when God, by way of His angel, shouts No! “Do not lay a hand on the boy” (1), just a second before his knife touches the skin of his son, Avraham wakes up from his so-called religiosity.

Avraham still has to learn that his willingness not to kill his child far surpasses his earlier commitment to make an end to his son’s life. The angelic messenger calls “Avraham,Avraham!” repeating his name twice because the command to desist and not sacrifice is harder to accept than the original commandment to kill. It goes against the trend of what it means to be religious. Yet, not to listen is greater proof of commitment to this “Jewish” God than is the willingness to sacrifice in honor of this God. The wake-up call is loud and clear! The impact of this message is far more shocking and forceful than that of the earlier call to kill. This God is an entirely different God. Capricious and unpredictable but, strangely enough, also demonstrating that human life is holy and may not be taken except in self-defense.

Until this incident, Avraham believed that it was only permitted to object to God if He was about to damage His reputation by doing a great injustice such as destroying the cities of Sedom and Amora. In that sense, he surpassed Noah whose reticence prevented him from even protesting when God told him that He would destroy all of mankind with the flood. Avraham had already realized that the Jewish God is different from all the other gods among whose followers he lived. To let the world perish is not what this God desires. So Avraham fights back. But once he loses the battle and is unable to convince God to leave these cities of Sedom and Amora alone, he concludes that Noah must have been right after all. There is no point in fighting God’s will.

What Avraham fails to see is that while he loses this battle, God clearly encourages Him to give it a sincere try so as to win. After all, God listens to his arguments. When Avraham contends that if there were to be 50, 40, 30, 20, even 10 tzadikim, then these cities should be spared, God does not respond by telling him to mind his own business. On the contrary, He clearly indicates that He might be convinced, if Avraham’s arguments were better or the circumstances different. But Avraham apparently fails to get this point. He seems to conclude that since he didn’t succeed, there is no point in arguing with God any longer. Why, after all, would God listen to man’s subjective arguments? What could man possibly know about God’s reasoning?

So Avraham doesn’t argue with God when He asks him to sacrifice his son. God may be incomprehensible, but He is consistent. He knows what He is doing. Who am I to argue?

This God, however, Who is the Creator of heaven and earth, teaches Avraham not to give up. He shows him that He is open to discussion and would have listened to his arguments in favor of his son. Now that Avraham is silent, God takes up the argument that Avraham ought to have made but didn’t. What Avraham should have done for God, God now does for him. He tells Avraham, You ought to have fought Me. You should have told Me, “Far be it from You! Shall the whole world’s Judge not do justice?” (2) God now needs to save Himself and His mission despite Avraham’s religiosity! He must ensure that the Jewish people will come into being, notwithstanding Avraham’s readiness to forgo that possibility.

Avraham is thus exposed to an aspect of God that is both blasphemous and ethical. This God appears to be unstable, but He is also a God of incomprehensible magnitude, power and moral supremacy: One Who is prepared to listen to man, take him seriously, and even be defeated by him! Who can make sense of this God? Avraham begins to learn that this God is tragic because He makes Himself appear as a God Who lacks all qualities of a real god, but in truth is greater than all idols.

God appears to experience all the human emotions: love; anger; involvement; indignation; regret; sadness; and so on. By so doing, He gives the seal of divinity to the very essence of our humanity. He implicitly says to man: “You cannot know what is above and what is below, but you can know what is in your hearts and in the world. These feelings and reactions and emotions that make up human existence are, if illumined by faith and rationality, all the divinity you can hope for. To be humane is to be divine: as I am holy, so you shall be holy; as I am merciful, so you shall be merciful.” Thus, there is only one kind of knowledge that is open to man, the knowledge of God’s humanity (3).

Suddenly, Avraham learns that to be religious is to live with a God Who carries contradictions and incongruities. Consistent gods are idols because they do not teach man how to live in a world that is full of dichotomies and inconsistencies. To be religious means to know how to navigate unresolvable conflicts, to be bold enough to negotiate, and to stand upright even when failing. It is in the unresolved that real life is lived. Only that can lead man to true religiosity. Avraham learns that a God Whom one fully understands is only half a God. Because a life without dichotomies is a life not lived. The overwhelming paradoxes are what portray life in its full force and reality.

Indeed, this God of many contradictions is the only God man can really worship: tragic, yet sublime. To serve Him means not only to obey, but also to protest.

At Mount Sinai, Moshe warned the Israelites, “Be careful not to climb the mountain and touch its edge” (4). How true is the Kotzker Rebbe’s interpretation—be careful when you climb the mountain, not to touch just its edge. Go all the way!

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About Nathan Lopes Cardozo

Rabbi Dr. Nathan Lopes Cardozo is the Founder and Dean of the David Cardozo Academy and the Bet Midrash of Avraham Avinu in Jerusalem. A sought-after lecturer on the international stage for both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences, Rabbi Cardozo is the author of 13 books and numerous articles in both English and Hebrew. He heads a Think Tank focused on finding new Halachic and philosophical approaches to dealing with the crisis of religion and identity amongst Jews and the Jewish State of Israel. Hailing from the Netherlands, Rabbi Cardozo is known for his original and often fearlessly controversial insights into Judaism. His ideas are widely debated on an international level on social media, blogs, books and other forums.

Every week I receive hundreds of emails, as well as a host of important observations on my essays, via our website, Facebook, newspaper blogs, and other media outlets. It is therefore completely impossible for me to respond – for which I apologize – but please be assured that I read every comment, which I deeply appreciate and from which I learn so much. Only in exceptional cases will I respond in a subsequent essay. My office staff will try to be more prompt in posting these remarks on our website.

Thank you very much for taking the time to share your comments with me, as well as with your fellow readers. I hope you will continue to do so.

Nathan Lopes Cardozo

Comments

Seventy faces has the Torah and almost everything can be understood in very different ways. Personally, I have not studied and I can only and simply read the Tanakh, without any previous influence, as it reads.
The story of the Akeda might very begin at the moment when Abram decides to part from Lot and… lures his nephew into a trap. He gives Lot, in appearance, a choice between right and left which was indeed forbidden, because the Land had to belong to his seed (Gen. 12:7)! But then, he induces Lot, who was listening evidently with his eyes toward the ground, to look in front of him and the lad made the bad choice and went to Jericho and Sdom (Gen. 13:9/10).
Now God also lures Avraham into a trap! Against all the expected considerations, He apparently requires a human sacrifice?! The son, nothing less!? But the reality is that God never demanded such a sacrifice, He only wanted Avraham to go to Mount Moriah and do the climb, maybe for a blessing on this Holy Mountain.
The word play is between Olah (sacrifice to God) and Olah, or Oleh,
the one who goes up! Of course, He stops Avraham and gives him compliments, laughing under His moustache!
My way of understanding God who has in Himself the two sexes, as He makes Adam in His image, with the two genders, is to consider that very often God is pushed more by His feminine side… So, He changes His mind and confuses the square men who expect clear understanding. However the woman has a womb (rehem in Hebrew, from which derives the word “mercy”) which makes me waiting for a happy end. The Italian composer, Verdi, sings “la donna è mobile =
woman is fickle and changes her mind” Nice music anyway.

In an essay titled, “Who answered our father Abraham at Mount Moriah [site of the binding and of the Temple in Jerusalem]?” Amital teaches that according to the rabbinic tradition, Abraham prayed that God would retract His command to sacrifice Isaac. And while outwardly surrendering to the will of his father, Isaac silently prayed that he would be saved.

Amital asks how the rabbinic sages knew that Abraham prayed, as there is no mention of a prayer in the biblical text. He answers that it is self-evident, because Abraham, in addition to being a loyal servant to God, was also a “loving merciful father, who does not hide his feelings but rather prays that his son will be saved.” According to Amital, the lesson to be learned from the binding is that religious fervor can never be divorced from normal human emotion.

In this reading Abraham does not understand God, but he follows him, while still expressing human reservations. In doing so, he neither follows blindly nor refuses to do God’s bidding. In essence, he, sotto voce, asks the same question he asked in Sodom. He is willing to express his discomfort with God’s decision, but he does not go so far as to envision Him as unstable or to disobey him. God remains “comfortably” unknowable, a paradigm of paradox, Who can still be followed.

Perhaps it is merely a question of semantics, but it is still unclear to me why you argue that “consistent gods are idols because they do not teach man how to live in a world that is full of dichotomies and inconsistencies.” God is also consistent in that he is paradoxical, applying His divine values or knowledge, in ways He deems appropriate in varying situations. One might even argue that “there is a method to this madness.” Human beings are tragic because they cannot always resolve these paradoxes and understand Him.

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